Adding a remote shutter to a cheap digital camera

[Luo] sent in a very easy way to add a remote shutter to just about any Canon Powershot. Even though it’s just a button, battery, and USB cable, we’re sure this would be a great project to teach the younglings about the power of soldering.

Some Canon Powershot digicams are impressive beasts with the ability to take time-lapse, long exposure, and high-speed photos. These cameras are generally crippled by their firmware, but by installing CHDK these features can be enabled.

[Luo] read the CHDK wiki and found the firmware has the ability to snap a picture whenever a button is pressed. All he had to do is send 5V down a USB cable. After whipping up shutter button housed in a tin of Eclipse gum and attaching a cable, [Luo] had a functional shutter.

With the CHDK firmware, you can do a lot of really interesting stuff with the old Canon camera sitting on your shelf: we’ve seen a lot of intervalometers and even a few book scanners that use a similar setup. Nice work, [Luo].

CHDK is cool, but there are some Canon cameras it doesn’t work with. Each firmware revision has to be reverse-engineered separately, and some cameras can’t be upgraded to the right version. I have two Canon A490’s, and one can run CHDK while the other can’t. The more popular models will usually work, but check the website before you buy.

Even better, CHDK scripts can now use the get_usb_power function to return how long (to within ~10ms) power was applied. Here is their wiki link on it. (A Kickstarter project for a wireless remote adapter that converted standard universal remote codes to different pulse lengths would be very popular, I would think.)

This software is awsome! I made my own remote shutter using a USB Car Carger, push button and 3 Button Cells for my Cannon SX30IS. Almost looks professsional along side my camera! Love the extra cabpabilitie it adds!